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If you're a ceo and have 10k employees, and you get them to accept 1k a year less each in wages, you made the shareholders 10m. So it makes sense you get 1m ext
by LatteLazy 6y ago
If you're a ceo and have 10k employees, and you get them to accept 1k a year less each in wages, you made the shareholders 10m. So it makes sense you get 1m extra. (1k a year for a full time employee is 50c/h roughly, less if you factor in pay linked benefits and other costs).
Hilton has 173k employees. So a ceo who can get minimal amounts more out of them or cut the cost of them even slightly is worth a fortune.
I think this is the real driving force behind the ceo pay numbers we've seen: more big companies where a single ceo or a small top-team have huge leverage.
I'm not making a moral arguement. Just a practical/Economic one. I think "leverage" is a better concept here than "responsibility" (which carries moral implications...)
- danaris 6y agoI'm definitely making a moral argument, because I am a moral person, but for those for whom such arguments hold no sway, I am also making also a practical, economic one: We have ample evidence, from the way things have gone over the past few decades, that increasing inequality in an economic system is bad for the system as a whole.
- loceng 6y agoIndeed, you need to properly fund/fuel/lubricate the largest segment/cog in the capitalist system - the consumer; UBI tied to inflation.
- LatteLazy 6y agoI agree, but that's not something any one ceo can control. All he can do is maximise his own pay.
- aaron-santos 6y agoYep, and probably preaching to the choir here. That's usually why these conversations tend toward criticizing the systems that encourage these incentives.
- alephu5 6y agoThe important questions remains: Why is it possible to reduce salaries without losing your workforce? If it's because the economy is shrinking and job supply is dropping, CEO salaries should be less competitive too and share prices should be dropping but we see the contrary. There's something more than basic market dynamics at play here, inequality is being systematically nurtured which I think is the premise of the article.
- LatteLazy 6y agoBecause we automate away jobs. If you can fill more orders with fewer employees you go up in value, either as the ceo or the company share price. Weve been automating away jobs in all sorts of places for decades. Sometimes that's robots. More often its just production method changes. No more need for skilled taxi drivers when you have GPS etc.
- 29athrowaway 6y agoWe automate tasks, not necessarily entire jobs.
- LatteLazy 6y agoThat's true, but is it meaningful difference? If all the skilled tasks you do are automated, you're not really a skilled worker anymore are you? So suddenly the ceo can replace you with anyone else and the lower limit on your wages is minimum wage...
- 29athrowaway 6y agoMost supermarkets have automated self checkout units but still require someone to supervise they are used. They have automated some tasks but not every task.